Cote Smith - Hurt People

In the end I could make no shapes out of the pool on my leg or the chalk kid’s sketch. No whales or hippos, ships or pirates, no secret islands in the sea. Nothing made sense, and all that was left was to keep going. To wipe my leg and walk on.

* * *

What felt like hours passed. I found footprints and they were my own. I was walking in circles, with no idea how to go home. It shouldn’t be this hard, I kept telling myself. They weren’t that far ahead. I started in a different direction. I saw trees I hadn’t seen before, creeks I prayed were new. The sun glowed high above and wasn’t close to quitting the day. I pretended I was in the desert and started making my own mirages. That creek was an oasis. That mud was silver, those rocks were gold. And what was that laughter? Where did those voices come from? From some bush that was my brother. From some splintered trunk that was Chris.

I shook my head, but the mirage didn’t go away. I still heard voices. I heard Chris’s laughter, close, and I ran to the sound. In the fall, I would have been noisy. I would have crashed through dead leaves breaking beneath my feet. But now, at the tail end of summer, the world was much louder than me. Under the rush of wind pushing fat clouds across the sky, I ran, my feet drumming along to the beat of birdsong. I came to a faint path. A thin line of dirt stamped a lighter brown by two sets of footprints. I bent down and touched the smaller one, then sprinted the path until I saw my brother. Or the mirage that was my brother. My brother that was and wasn’t real. Chris had taken his bag and carried it for him. His other hand held my brother’s wrist.

I should have screamed right away, but the scene before me was a bad dream. Someone was standing over my bed, preparing to hurt me, and I couldn’t open my mouth. The sleep world wouldn’t let me. All I could do was moan, Mmmmm , like a mummy, and point. There. There it is. Somebody please make it stop.

I couldn’t yell or talk, so I followed. More clouds moved in, a possible storm. My marks moved quickly. They didn’t run, but they walked with long legs, their bodies in a hurry.

They paused at a hall of trees. A long, narrow clearing, with the towering woods lining each side. I had to tell my legs, so used to walking, to stop. I lay down on a muddy slope and listened, spied like I did on my parents in the dream about the tree.

“What?” my brother said. “Is this it?”

“Close,” Chris said. “This is the road to it. A little farther.”

“I don’t get it. You keep your car out here?”

“No, not here, exactly.”

My brother took his hand from Chris. “Yeah, but how did you get it here? Your car. It doesn’t make sense.”

Chris kept looking around, but not at my brother. “This isn’t the time for questions, OK?”

“Yes, but—”

“I’m sorry, we have to keep moving.”

My brother looked down at his sneakers, which he hadn’t worn all summer.

“Remember,” Chris said. “I asked you. I asked you if you were ready. I told you what it would mean. Remember? I made sure.” He handed my brother his bag. “But it’s up to you. You can take your bag and run back home, if you’d like, to your tiny apartment and your mom and dad, or we can stick to our plan. But I can’t keep talking about it.”

My brother cradled his bag to his chest, and Chris asked him what’s it going to be, my liege, a hint of his early charm returning to his voice. But my brother wasn’t so easily fooled. His body tightened and his mouth stayed straight. He wants to go home, I should have said. I should have stood up, revealed myself, and said, I’ve never seen that face, but that’s what it says. Sorry, Chris. It’s over. We’re going home.

And this time I did stand up. This time I shook off my dream and my voice returned to my throat. But as I opened my mouth to speak, my brother handed Chris his bag. He said, Here. He said, I don’t want to go back.

* * *

They walked a little longer. Chris kept his arm around my brother, though neither seemed to enjoy it. I tailed them without even trying. I didn’t watch where I stepped or keep the proper distance. I sulked. I hoped I’d get caught, but had lost the courage or will to come out. What was the point? I didn’t know where I was or how to get back, and there was no one around who cared enough to show me the way.

A bush stopped them. The size of a tree but not a tree. What is it? my brother said. A gate, Chris said. A passage to something special. Yes, my brain mocked, it’s always something special with Chris. He peeled back the bush and gestured my brother in. The gate was a mouth of darkness that led to a place unseen. But what did I care. This is the time to turn around, I told myself, to find your own way home. This isn’t the time to worry about your brother. He didn’t want to go back. This wasn’t the time to wonder why you’d heard no sounds after Chris disappeared into the bush and the gate closed up. To wonder what was so great about this place, to let doubt creep in and poke you with stupid questions: What if this is something great and you’re missing it? Or, what if it’s the opposite? What if your brother needs you? What then? What would it be like to not be able to forgive yourself?

The bush’s needles scratched at my face as I waded into the gate. I closed my eyes and followed the rustling in front of me, the brushing of branches and shuffling of feet. Almost there, I heard Chris whisper. Come on, come on, he sang, come a little closer. There. Isn’t that better?

I opened my eyes and didn’t understand. I was still in the bushes. This was not what I wanted. I pushed forward, harder, the needles tickling my skin with tiny cuts. It’s OK, Chris said, it will only hurt at first. But already I could feel the burn of a scrape, the smear of my own blood. It’s OK, Chris said again. It’s fine. No one is here but us.

When I emerged from the bush, it took a moment for me to understand what was before me. To take it all in. I was in a clearing, yes. Naked of bushes and trees, but somehow shaded, somehow covered. And in the middle, impossible to miss, was a silo, twenty or thirty feet tall, a lonesome tower of block and cement. It was ancient and beautiful, but in bad shape. Its top was shattered; blocks cracked like broken teeth.

I circled the silo, tracing my hand against its grainy, uneven surface. Then my hand ran out of wall. I came to where there should’ve been a side, but there wasn’t. There was a big gap, blown into existence by some disaster I couldn’t imagine. I stepped through that gap and saw the tree. An oak. It was the biggest tree I’d ever seen and it stood dead center in the silo, where it made no sense to be. I craned my neck and followed the tree to the silo’s top, where its branches had grown straight up, as if the tree were being robbed. How big. How strange. This was what Chris had promised. This, I understood, was a secret worth keeping.

Remember, Chris said to my brother, reading my mind. Remember what we said about secrets. Well, this is ours. OK? From now on, this is something only you and me know. Because, the thing is, I’ve tried this before, and it didn’t work out. But that was my fault, understand. I rushed it. But this is different, right? You and me. I’ve waited. Those days at the pool. Our walks. Yes, that’s right. So it’ll be OK. We’ll do what we need to do, then we’ll be on our way, and everything will be just fine.

I couldn’t see where Chris’s words were coming from. They bounced around me, off the silo walls, and faded, fleeing out the gap. I sneaked around the tree. I told myself it was OK. Chris knows you’re here. He’s read your mind and he welcomes you. Leave the past at the pool. You belong here too. You belong with your brother.